Crusade and Jihad ─ The Thousand-year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North

What really happened in the centuries of conflict between Europe, Russia, China, America, and the peoples of the Muslim world

This groundbreaking book is the first to address the catastrophic results of centuries of conflict, imperialism, and colonialism by the global north—China, Russia, Europe, Britain, and America—in the Muslim world. We see this legacy in the flood of refugees, collapse of institutions, terrorism, and widespread misery. Military force, regime change, and aid have failed because we have not understood the region’s history—or our own role in it. To move toward peace and security, we must understand the causes of turmoil.

Focusing half a century of experience as a historian, policy planner, diplomat, and businessman, William R. Polk explains in this authoritative work the deep hostilities that today convulse this part of the world. He deals with the entire Muslim world, from Nigeria to Indonesia, and from the dawn of Islam to the rise of the Islamic State, and explains how the dangers arose that we and the Muslims face, and how the dangers can be dealt with.

William R. Polk taught Arabic literature and history at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, served on the Policy Planning Council under President Kennedy, negotiated the Egyptian-Israeli Suez ceasefire, and founded the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. He has written nineteen books.